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Australian Aboriginal Economy

The Australian aboriginal economy

Who are the Australian aboriginals and how did the get to Australia? Sometime between 40 and 70 thousand years ago they arrived, using land bridges during the ice age when the ocean water level was several hundred feet lower than today. They are the original and only people to make Australia their home.

THE DREAMTIME

They say we have been here for 40 000 years, but it is much longer -

We have been here since time began We have come directly out of the Dreamtime of our creative ancestors -

We have kept the earth as it was on the first day. Our culture is focused on recording the origins of life.

We refer to forces and powers that created the world as creative ancestors.

Our beautiful world has been created only in accordance with the power, wisdom and intentions of our ancestral beings.

This primal statement I think shows a people with a great spiritual affluence and a deep rooted sense of belonging to the Earth Mother, very content to be her children. Economy is a platform that gives us the opportunity and time to development this same affluence for ourselves. We can use the Australian aborigine as an example of a simple and nourishing state of life without the mental struggle and the complications of our money entrenched society.

THE DREAMTIME

During the creation of our world , the ancestors moved across a barren land, hunting, camping, fighting and loving and in doing so shaped a featureless landscape.

Moving from Dreams to actions, the ancestors made the ants, the emus, the crows, the possums, the wallabies, the kangaroos, the lizard, the goanna, the snakes and all the food and plants.

They made the sun, the moon and the planets. They made the humans, tribes and clans.

Each could transform into the other. A plant could become an animal, an animal a landform, a landform a man or a woman. Everything was created from the same source.

Everything was created in our Dreamtime.

As the world took shape and was filled with species and varieties of the ancestral tranformations, the ancestors tired and retired into

• the earth
• the sky
• the clouds
• and the creatures to live within all their created
• In our Dreamtime

The ancestors created the economy of stuff from their actions and then retired back into it. Curving back onto myself I create again and again. And a sustainable, renewable, recyclable economy was born.

Physical world slide

PHYSICAL WORLD

" OUR LAND OUR LIFE "

'We don't own the land, the land owns us'

'The Land is my mother, my mother is the land'

'Land is the starting point to where it all began. It is like picking up a piece of dirt and saying this is where I started and this is where I will go'

'The land is our food, our culture, our spirit and identity'

'We don't have boundaries like fences, as farmers do. We have spiritual connections'

Here we have the physical world of real things, commodities, possessions, still registering as a gift and sacred trust from nature.

Australian Aboriginal economics slide

HUNTING / GATHERING

At contact, the Aboriginal economy was based on a stable, considered management of the environment and an effective organization of labor. Males and females made different but complementary economic contributions. Women were primarily the gatherers of vegetables, roots, herbs, fruits and nuts, eggs and honey, and small land animals such as Snakes, Goannas. Men were the hunters of large land animals and birds and also co-operated to organize large-scale hunting drives to catch Emu's and Kangaroos. The collection and preparation of this wide variety of bush food required the development of an efficient, multifunctional technology, considerable practical skills, and its seasonal changes. Some plant foods were easy to collect but required complex preparation before they could be eaten.

TRADE / ART / MUSIC

Aboriginal groups exchanged natural resources, such as ochres, and tools, such as stone axes and boomerangs, thus creating extensive trading networks. Goods traveled hundreds of kilometers from their original source.

For example, boomerangs made in Central Australians would find their way to Arnhem Land and the surrounding islands. Didgeridoos from Arnhem Land would find their way down to Central Australia. Pearl shells from the Kimberley were traded through Central Australia down into South Australia.

From Stone Age Economics The original Affuent Society.

The hunter, one is tempted to say, is “uneconomic man” At least as concerns nonsubsistence goods, he is the reverse of that standard caricature immortalized in any General Principles of Economics, page one. His wants are scarce and his means (in relation) plentiful. Consequently he is Comparatively free of material pressures,” no sense of possession,” shows “an undeveloped sense of property,” is completely indifferent to any material pressures,” manifests a “lack of interest in developing his technological equipment. It is not that hunters and gathers have curbed their materialistic “impulses”, they simply never made an institution of them. “moreover if it a great blessing to be free from a great evil, our Savages are happy; for the two tyrants who provide hell and torture for many of our Europeans, do not reign in their forests,-I mean ambition and avarice…as they are content with a mere living, not one of them gives himself to the Devil to acquire wealth”.

Australian Aboriginal culture slide

OUR FAMILY SYSTEM / SKIN NAMES

In our family, or kinship systems, we recognize our relations "by blood" and by marriage as in other societies. We also regard ourselves as being related (although not biologically or by marriage) to all the people within our cultural or linguistic region. Our kinship system groups various categories of relations together as a sort of "mental map" so we know who we are related to , and how we should behave towards each other. The whole cultural group may be divided into two, four, six or eight sections.

From time immemorial - that is, as far back as traditions go - the boundaries of the tribes have been where they are now fixed. Within them their ancestors roamed about, hunting and performing their ceremonies just as their living descendants do at the present day. There has never apparently been the least attempt made by one tribe to encroach upon the territory of another.

ARRERNTE LANGUAGE

I used information from the website of a locally owned and operated business. For this presentation. This website belongs to the kinship group known as the Arrernte.

The Arrernte region is large and traditionally, there are many different family areas within it, each with their own dialect. Language is strongly connected with family membership and the relationships to land and Dreamings that go with this.

CULTURAL HERITAGE

The Dreaming is as important to Aboriginal people as the Christian Bible and the whole ethos of Christian belief is to the devout Christian. The Dreaming is still vitally important to today's Aboriginal people. It gives a social and spiritual base and links them to their cultural heritage. Many Aboriginal people are Christian as well as having a continuing belief in their Dreaming. In some areas, where Aboriginal people may no longer have the full knowledge of their Dreaming, they still retain strong spirituality, kinship practices and traditional values and beliefs

The vibrant ceremonial and religious life of Northern Territory people generated a spectacular array of art forms, including body painting and personal ornamentation, ground sculpture, bark painting, wood carving, and rock painting and engraving. Artistic creativity and innovation were informed by religious belief. Designs and motifs embodied multiple sets of meanings about group ownership of lands and relationships to particular Ancestral Beings.

CONCEPT OF TIME

The Dreaming is often understood as a period of time, but this European concept of a unit of time in past does not contain the full meaning. The Dreaming is not some long past era but a continuous entity, from which people come, which people renew and which people go back to. Art is one to the ways through which Aboriginal people communicate with and maintain a oneness with the Dreaming. When people take on the characteristics of the Dreaming ancestors through dance, song and art and when they maintain sacred sites, the spirits of the creator ancestors are renewed.

ICONOGRAPHY slide

CONCEPT OF ART IN TRADITIONAL ABORIGINAL SOCIETY

The concept of art in traditional Aboriginal society is very different to the concept of art in European society. In traditional Aboriginal societies, activities like dancing, singing, body decorations, sand drawings, making implements or weaving baskets were not considered to be separate activities called art and design. All of these activities were a part of the Dreaming and a part of normal daily life. There was no concept of a special type of person, artists, because, in a sense, everyone was an artist.

ICONOGRAPHY

Art is a very important part of our religious life, to maintain traditional representations and styles. It is still in the tradition to represent many of the desert Dreaming stories, and the sand paintings have been replaced by paintings on canvas and new styles like dot paintings and X rays styles are the most popular modern art styles based on traditional Dreaming and totemic representations.

Symbols used within paintings include concentric circles, curved lines & straight lines. Concentric circles usually represent camp sites, waterholes or places of significance. Curved lines generally represent rain or water traveling underground. Straight lines may be indicative of traveling & when these lines join concentric circles it may show the pathway traveled by the ancestors. A small "U" shaped figure may represent a person & depending on the iconography next to the person determines whether it is male or female. Tracks, whether human or animal, are often shown as they appear on the ground. Lizards and snakes are frequently seen from a topographical view - as one would see them from above. Dotted motifs & design work have become the trademark of the contemporary Aboriginal Art movement.

Summary slide

I am using The website http://aboriginalart.com.au for much of this presentation. It is owned and operated by the Aboriginal Australian Art & Culture Center – Alice Springs Central Australia, 100% Aboriginal owned & Operated. They sell art and are involved in tourism.

OUR COUNTRY " Our story is in the land it is written in those sacred places. My children will look after those places, that's the law. "

ABORIGINAL PEOPLE AND THE NORTHERN TERRITORY Aboriginal people comprise 25 % of the Northern Territory's population and own nearly 50 % of the land. Nowhere else in Australia do Indigenous people have a stronger presence. Our strength is embedded in ties to our country. These ties have ensured the resilience of our people and their traditions for thousands of years. Aboriginal people believe we have been here "forever". According to current scientific theories, it is thought that Aborigines have occupied Australia for over 60,000 years - and possibly more than 100,000 years.

HOMELANDS MOVEMENT

Since the early 1970's small groups of Aboriginal people have been moving away from larger settlements like Alice Springs, to establish outstation communities in the bush. The outstation or homeland movement reflects a desire by Aboriginal people to reaffirm links with their land and their culture. At outstations there are still people who hunt and gather, live in bush shelters little different from pre-contact ones, and participate fully in ritual. However, the outstation movement does not represent a simple return to the pre-contact past or a rejection of introduced goods. People have adopted and adapted European technology and foods to suit their own needs. In 1990, a group of elders descendants of Penangke in conjunction with the Central land Council negotiated with the owners of the Orange Creek Station leasehold and small incisions of 1500 hectares to re-establish their community. This Community living area was granted in 1993. Since that time 7 houses have been built and a power generator have been established. In 1997, the community started a work program with 8 trainees enrolled in small business and tourism courses in Alice Springs.

SAVOUR OF THE ART AND THE ATTRACTIONS For a town of only 27 000 people, Alice Springs has a wealth of galleries, museums and other highlights which reflect the great vitality - and diversity - of Aboriginal life in Central Australia.

A short walk through town reveals a flourishing marketplace for art. Several Aboriginal owned galleries such as ours, display work from outlying desert communities and some provide opportunities to interact with artists.